Numerous entities including individuals, companies and other forms of businesses are interested in a Business to Business (B2B) site where the members are able to find trading partners from all over the world for trading goods and services.
An existing Net Commerce product produced by IBM offers 3 types of stores, namely One Stop Shop, Personal Delivery and Business to Business Store. One Stop Shop is a simple business to consumer store model that does not require shoppers to register. Personal Delivery is a business to consumer store model that offers more store functions including Registration and Address Books. Business to Business is a B2B store model that includes an approval process for purchases. All three types of stores, however, assume that a merchant is selling products to consumers visiting their store (be it Casual Shoppers as in One Stop Shop, Registered Shoppers as in Personal Delivery, or office managers as in Business to Business Shop). The product was called Net.Commerce Start and Pro Editions, v3.x earlier, until v3.2. The product is currently referred to as WebSphere Commerce Suite Start and Pro Editions, Version 4.1.
The Net Commerce product provided by IBM has a number of features:                1. Helps build compelling e-commerce sites that allow customers to shop the way the customers want to: set preferences, navigate personal catalogs, drop items in shopping carts, check out, select payment and shipping methods and pay for purchases by credit card;        2. Helps the site administrator to easily manage stores or malls through a administrative interface that controls security using user Ids and password protection and lets the site administrator monitor buyer behavior to plan for future site enhancements;        3. Helps create interactive catalogs that contain marketing and technical information to help guide customers through the buying process, leading them to the products the customers want to purchase; and        4. Accept and process those Credit Card Payments.        
In Net.Commerce, the key concept is that something is sold. The sellable thing is known as a product. The user buys and pays for a product. However the trading network itself does not sell any product. Rather the trading network helps party A know that party B is selling a relevant product. If a party is interested in buying the product, the party can contact party B. The contact with party B and the negotiations happen outside the system. Hence, this system does not sell products.
Instead, the NetCommerce product broadcasts appropriate opportunities (to buy/sell products) to appropriate people. Hence party A posts an opportunity that the party is interested in selling something. Party B states an interest in buying something. The system helps in alerting party B that party A might meet party B's demands, but party B does not buy products through the system. Party B has to contact party A offline for buying this.
Thus, a need clearly exists for a trading system permitting any registered shopper to enter a product (read opportunity) and not only the administrator.